Marketo CEO Steve Lucas: 'We're the Best in Marketing Automation'

Marketo's new CEO Steve Lucas just put Salesforce Pardot and Oracle Eloqua on notice. "Marketo will be the clear and dominant force in marketing," Lucas told CMSWire.1 If history is any indication, Lucas may have what it takes to deliver. As president of enterprise platform and analytics at SAP, he led SAP HANA's growth from zero to more than $1 billion in annual revenue in less than four years. Additionally, Lucas said, in 2015 his group was responsible for more than half of total license revenue at SAP, which has a market cap $98.4 billion. What's at Stake at Marketo? Last month, Lucas replaced Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez who founded the San Mateo, Calif.-based marketing automation provider in 2006. His departure comes just months after Vista Equity Partners closed on its $1.79 billion acquisition of Marketo, triggering a leadership realignment. And while marketing automation and account based marketing (ABM) will help you get there in a profound way — Marketo touts its account-based marketing (ABM) as  the only unified platform that covers account targeting and management, personalized cross-channel engagement and revenue-based account analytics, plus lead management functionality — Lucas told CMSWire his company is making a pivot of sorts.